Part of sports is the constant quest to know one’s opponent. A bigger part sometimes, and a more difficult task, is getting to know yourself.
Mark Buehrle learned things about himself last season when he faltered in maintaining the success he had through most of his career.
The White Sox left-hander was a high school star. He was a junior college All-American. He was an immediate success in the minors in 1999-2000, the Southern League pitcher of the year for Birmingham. He was 4-1 with the Sox at the end of 2000, then a combined 35-20 the next two seasons. Baseball life was good.
Early last season, things unraveled. After a 2-1 start, Buehrle lost nine straight games, more in one miserable stretch than he ever had for an entire season. For the first time he felt some doubt.
“You lose [nine] games in a row and you’re getting hit around, you wonder if you’re tipping your pitches or if they just own you, they have what you’re throwing,” Buehrle said. “It was tough sometimes coming into the clubhouse, feeling like you let your team down, and you don’t feel as much like being around the guys after you’d gotten rocked and didn’t give your team a chance to win.
“I don’t think guys wanted to talk to me, afraid they’d catch my bad luck.”
But the measure of a professional isn’t always how they handle success; it’s also how they deal with failure.
“I think it did make me a better pitcher,” he said of handling his adversity. “You’re not always up; it gets you down a little and that stinks, but it puts you on an even keel.”
Buehrle’s 2003 late-season comeback was nearly enough to carry the White Sox into the postseason. He went 7-1 over his last 10 starts with a 2.22 ERA and finished with a 14-14 record that virtually qualified him for comeback player of the year–all in one season.
His performance, however, did qualify Buehrle for something more important. In December the Sox signed him to a three-year contract worth $18 million, with the club having an option to pay him $9.5 million for a fourth season in 2007.
Buehrle did more than simply grind out the 2003 season. He finished with more than 220 innings for the third straight year and has established himself as nothing less than an old-school workhorse in a game that rarely appreciates the way he practices his craft.
In an era of power, Buehrle is nearly a mirror image of a young Greg Maddux. In their first three 200-inning seasons, Maddux was 52-35 while Buehrle went 49-34. Buehrle doesn’t throw; he pitches. He was throwing 78-m.p.h. fastballs in high school and junior college and still is pitching with his head as much as his arm.
“I’m not an overpowering guy, I’m not out there putting a lot of strain on my arm,” Buehrle said. “I’m basically throwing 85-90 [m.p.h.] and not 90 that often.”
Instead of worrying about adding velocity, Buehrle has worked on the intricacies of his game. Indeed, that was part of the problem last year.
Trying to get more movement on his pitches, Buehrle began 2003 throwing more sinkers early in the count. When the new approach left him uncharacteristically behind in counts, he was forced to come in with pitches that hitters jumped on. Then pitching coach Don Cooper suggested a critical change.
“We moved him over on the rubber, toward third base a few inches, so he was able to throw his two-seamer and changeup to the middle of the plate and to help his cutter in against righties,” Cooper said. “The big difference in the second half was he did get a bit sharper, but also we scored and played defense. There were a lot of funny things that happened to Mark early [in 2003].”
A funny thing happened to Buehrle after the season too. The organization approached him and asked him to work with some of the younger pitchers on his techniques for throwing certain pitches. At 25, he was the sage veteran. Among Sox starters, only Esteban Loaiza has more experience.
“It’s different,” Buehrle said, laughing. “I don’t see myself being a teacher or somebody someone looks up to. I’ve only been in the big leagues 3 1/2 years. But we have a lot of young guys and I tell them that if there’s anything you need help with . . .
“I’ll do what I can do. But I’m not that good a teacher; I sometimes don’t know how I do something, I just go out and do it.”
